Riding Man author Mark Gardiner provides insight into motorcycle racing, history, and industry news. A focus on road racing is to be expected from an ex-Isle of Man TT racer but Backmarker also covers everything from flat track to electric bikes.

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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Note to KRAVE: Fuck Daytona

Observers from the sublime (David Emmett) to myself have already started to parse the potential futures of American motorcycle road racing in the post-DMG era. One interesting topic is, what the class structure of the new series should be. And one comment that frequently comes up is something along these lines: "Since the first race of 2015, at Daytona, is only a few months away, the rules will probably remain unchanged for an interim year."

But I've got some more advice for KRAVE: Fuck Daytona.

There is no good reason to start the season in March, during Daytona's Bike Week, and there are several good reasons not to start it there.

In 1974, Yamaha brought Giacomo Agostini and the then-700cc TZ700 to Daytona, and won the 200. It meant something. But as the opening round of the U.S. championship, it's now a depressing anachronism. MotoAmerica would be better off without it, and it's possible that Daytona would be better off too—promoting a single event, or a true endurance race.

For starters, the track’s too much of a special case; it requires special tires and special rules. 2015 was, we’re told, going to see a return of Superbikes in the feature 200. But who knows if the tires’d hold up? Even when the tires do last on the banking, the refueling and pit stops merely serve to exaggerate the gap between have and have-not teams.

The track insists on that early March date that, again, especially punishes privateers. They're the ones who need another month to prepare machines and look for a budget. And that location right down in the lower right-hand corner of the map pretty much ensures high travel costs for everyone, anyway.

Daytona used to have special relevance, and link the AMA championship to the World Championship. In 1964 and ’65 they opened the World Championship at Daytona. (Hailwood won both 500GP races, on an MV Agusta.) Through the ‘70s, it was still the whole world’s unofficial first race meeting. Riders from the World Championship came to Florida on a sort of busman’s holiday, knocking the rust off at the Speedway. But that was at a time when there weren’t tracks (and early season races) in places like Qatar; there weren’t several great tracks in Spain; Phillip Island wasn’t ready for prime time.

Nowadays, the vast, empty grandstands are a silent but evocative testimony only to how far the once-great event has fallen. I can't imagine a bigger turn-off for sponsors. It’s not as if Daytona Beach could give a shit, either. The vast majority of people who attend Bike Week couldn’t tell you who Josh Hayes is. And any momentum that is developed at Bike Week is lost in the months-long wait for the second race of the season.

It would be far better to start the U.S. season with a proper race, at a proper modern track, some time in April. Austin leaps to mind. But perhaps the most important reason to fuck Daytona is, it would send a clear message: MotoAmerica isn't just AMA Pro Racing, repackaged.

Lest DMG take umbrage at my suggestion. I’ll add that, freed of it's role as America’s season opener, maybe it can find real international relevance again, either as cool 200-mile one-off run to the old Formula-USA rules, or run at an even longer distance, as a round of the World Endurance Championship.

Daytona (and Daytona Motorsports Group) is dead! Long live Daytona! Just not as the MotoAmerica opener. Fuck that.For the record: There's an excellent chance that DMG made keeping a race at Daytona a condition of the transaction when the rights were "reacquired". So here's a note to the AMA, while I'm at this: How about launching a new era of transparency, and you tell us just what that transaction entailed, huh?